Rewind: Putting on the Baby Weight

God help me, I LOVED being pregnant. Not one of those, “I’m a good mommy and pregnancy was a breeze!” things… I mean honest-to-goodness, keep-me-7-months-pregnant-all-the-time things. I can barely type up this blog because I’m fantasizing about it. I even have a pregnancy-fantasizing time every day: driving from work to daycare.

Nope it wasn’t a perfect pregnancy. Far from it. Plus, I was so scared I wasn’t going to get pregnant at all. I was a wreak. Times were not good for my dear husband and I. There was not much of a honeymoon period for us. I was stressed. It was baby makin’ time and I’ll be damned if we don’t get pregnant THIS VERY CYCLE! Now get to it!

42 days (oh yes, I was that obsessed) after we got married I was pregnant! Endometriosis be damned! I got the faintest little second line on the pregnancy test and threw the dang thing away… I didn’t think it was positive. At work I took one that would tell me “Pregnant” or “Not Pregnant” (you know, Am I Pregnant For Dummies)… and this is what I got:

Awesome Pee Stick Goodness.

I tested waaaay too early: 6 days before my missed period. I called into my doctor’s office and announced: “I’m knocked up!” and got an appointment right away. You know what their pee stick said?? That would be a big fat negative. She told me I wasn’t pregnant and took some blood to prove it. I immediately went home and peed on another stick. Two lines. Take THAT bitches!

So I was pregnant. Yes, I got morning (ha!) sickness. Brushing my teeth was a chore and heaven forbid I cough or sneeze. Holy cow. That lasted about 16 weeks. All my books said it would stop at 14 weeks, but my body said otherwise. I started wearing maternity clothes at 12 weeks. Sure, I was a little excited about it… but I was getting a belly too! At 17 weeks, the morning sickness stopped and the kicking begins!

Already big at 17 weeks.

For about 10 weeks, life. was. bliss. I got to walk around with my hands on my belly. Feel the baby kick around all day. I would walk around at home in my robe or PJs pointing at my belly and demanding Wayne to “look how cute this is!”.

Boy was a happy. I was off my meds for the Bipolar and the pregnancy totally agreed with me. The only hitch was the sleeping. I normally take a sleeping pill every night… so being pregnant I would read for an hour or so every night instead. I would normally punch out 3-4 books a week.

I felt like a Queen. Not the gay kind and not the honored kind either. I felt like I was to be beheaded if I didn’t produce a son. My nightly prayer went a little like this:

Dear Lord,

Please bless everyone I love, keep everyone safe and please make sure there is a penis in my uterus.

Amen

I didn’t really care what we had. I saw the good and bad with both sexes. Wayne wanted a boy with all his heart. He wanted a son. He wanted someone to play XBOX with. He wanted to throw footballs and roughhouse and he didn’t want a teenage daughter. He didn’t think he had enough bail money to deal with all the times he would have to kick some guy’s ass for looking at his daughter the wrong way.

Week 19 came along and we were all happy to hear that we were having a little boy! My neck was safe and Wayne can use his bail money for something else.

27 weeks along… well, I would say shit started to hit the fan, but it wasn’t that bad.

Just before something not quite as bad as shit hit the fan

About this time I fell. Landed right on my ass. I immediately thought, “Crap! I don’t think this is a good thing!”. It was right before bedtime and the baby loved to kick around while I was laying down. So I went straight to bed, got a few good kicks out of him and thought all was good. Then I started cramping. Crap Again! The next morning I go to work and I’m still cramping. Finally I decide to call the doctors. They send me to Labor and Delivery at the hospital. Triple Crap! When I arrive they make me look all belly-cute in a hospital gown and strap me up so I can be monitored. My little boy always loved to play with those damned things. He would kick them or avoid them and piss off the nurses. They couldn’t get a good reading on him. So I got to see another ultrasound of him and he was just fine. I was told to go home and lay down until the cramps went away. Later that night they did.

The next day my doctor’s office calls. Aren’t they sweet? They’re calling to be sure that I’m OK… WRONG! I have failed my blood glucose test! I’m going to have to avoid my doctors now. I’m going to have to have 3 hour test done now. Three days before the test they have me go on this carb overload diet. I had to eat so much I thought I was going to be sick. But as I scarfed down that second piece of cake, I reminded myself it was for the baby. Heh. I went in for the second test and my abused my arm and took my blood. A few days later I learned that I failed yet again. I officially had Gestational Diabetes. Awesome. From then until the end of the pregnancy I had to be on a strict diet, check my sugar levels (stab myself!) 4 times a day, and see the doctor twice a week. But that was the coolest thing: twice a week I went in and they strapped me up so I could hear the baby’s heartbeat for about 45 minutes and then they did an ultrasound! I was in heaven. Except when my baby got tasered, (or buzzed with something I swear was a vibrator), when he wasn’t moving around enough.

Finally, week 35 rolls along. Holy ouch-ness. For two entire days I’m left rolling around in pain. It was radiating from my new “waist”, (right above my big belly and right under my boobs). I didn’t call the doctor because I swore it was just a backache and some heartburn. I didn’t want to be laughed at… “Ha! ALL pregnant woman have those symptoms… get over yourself!” I prayed to God that this was not what labor pain was going to feel like because I couldn’t handle it. Turns out it was my liver starting to fail. Damned Liver.

The pain went away until the next week. That Monday it starts again while I’m at work… but I’ll tell you all about that in the next post: Evan’s birth story. (It’s already written so it’s coming right up! ) *ding!*